It was Twilight at the beginning and that adolescents sporting signs reading “bite me” had its logic. But now he’s off to conquer the “serious movie world” with a movie based on the masterpiece by Guy De Maupassant. Yet his fame shows no signs of decline. The secret? Whatever he plays the romantic Edward or an unscrupulous seducer, the space in which he moves is always the same: the charm of those men who “intoxicate you”

To decipher the Pattinson mystery and the obsessions that generates in some contemporary minds (like standing outside, waiting 32 hours just to see him showing for a moment) it is better starting from an
innocent line that contains a truth. Maybe bigger than expected. It happens when, in the Twilight movie, Bella asks Edward: You think I’m drunk? and he responds with a mischievous grin: “You’re intoxicated by my presence.” Intoxicated by his presence: this is the point to keep in mind.

Especially now that the end of the Twilight Saga, (the last chapter, Breaking Dawn, Part 2, will be out in cinemas next November) and Pattinson’s new movies are coming (Bel Ami is one of them, then above all we willCosmopolis David Cronenberg), things get very complicated. Because the vampire came out in the sunlight, but that did not seem to have weakened. But we can start following an order in things and start from the beginning, when everything was still understandable …

At first there was Twilight (the movie) and all had a logic: the vampire, the unconsummated love, books for kids, good and evil are blurred. And then comes HIM: young and undeniably cool.

That, after that movie, packs of teenagers into a frenzy have started showing signs waiting for him outside with the words “bite me” written on them had its own logic.

Nothing that we had not already seen. But the story (by Tom Cruise in Top Gun in the past with DiCaprio after Titanic) shows that the mass hysteria after a while it slows down.

Passion is temporary, Hollywood creates so many ultra cool young actors and groupies are no longer what they used to be: if you have to spend hours standing in the cold because you are a “fan”, you might as well change soon the idol, ditto for the filmmakers: after a while they change actors to worship. But this is not something true for Pattinson, however: four years and seven films beginning of his myth, the mass hysteria shows no sign of deflation, his fans continue to show themselves “drunk” as the first day and directors write “adult roles” for him. The question is: to be so beautiful and to have, as he has, an undeniable amount of talent justify a phenomenon of this magnitude? Evidently not. Yet it happens.

Bel Ami arrives in theaters? Well, nobody cares about Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci. At the maximum they end to act as a sounding board to HIS mystery with their statements (Thurman: “Robert is a serious actor, old-fashioned. Its B side (his back side), I have not got to admire it even once! Maybe my colleagues on the set were more fortunate” Christina Ricci: “I can not imagine what it means to be so famous like him. Is it crazy, but instead he deals well with it . He is so nice that you almost forget that he is so famous. I mean, he is like one of the Beatles, you know “) At the last Berlin Film Festival, where Bel Ami was presented out of competition, his fans have waited hours, with ten degrees below zero, including a group of girls who came specially from Thailand. “I’m bewildered,” he told reporters, and the expression on his face was that of one who, really, does not know how to achieve peace in the madness of others people. Like he was meaning: ok if its a movie about vampires, but even here (in a serious movie)? Yes, even in a serious film, and in fact the directors of Bel Ami, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, told to reporters, stunned, that two girls who were waiting in the cold, day and night, off the set to see Robert walking to/off the set, “even when it rained”

The reason is less than it may seem incomprehensible.

After all, the first law is that from the vampire world there is no return: once the transformation is complete, one remains vampire forever.

Beautiful and in fact, a little bloody. Or incomplete, looking for something that you can not find.

Whatever he is the romantic Edward Cullen, or the the unscrupulous seducer or Georges Duroy or the millionaire, violent and seductive, in Cosmopolis, he “talks” directly to girls or “grew up” girls, Whatever he vows to chastity with Kristen Stewart or he plays the devil between the sheets with Kristen Scott Thomas, this is the space where he can move: the restless beauty of who you never know if he is the hero or the villain. The kind of boy you ask you devotion, because he could take you to heaven or hell. Because, perhaps, these two worlds are not so different, and in this uncertainty makes its way the charm of the men “intoxicating”. As Edward does with Bella.